Nagin's office said the messages were recovered by a technology firm hired by Nagin to locate his missing e-mail messages for several months of 2008.

The messages placed on the website, www.cityofno.com, total more than 14,000 pages and date from early 2007 to early 2010.

Most of the messages are mundane and routine, but a few give glimpses of Nagin's personality and the inner workings of his administration.

In a March 29 message to Stewart Juneau, the developer he picked to carry out a controversial plan to redevelop the Municipal Auditorium, Nagin says of a CNN program about him: "The story was balanced. It seems as though every now and then a squirrel get a nut :)"

He ends the message: "2010: We made it happen."

The controversy over Nagin's e-mail messages began when news organizations sued in 2009 to get copies of his messages that the city had not produced in response to public-records requests. Despite state laws and city policies requiring retention of messages related to public business, the administration said the requested records had been deleted and could not be located.

Nagin hired the Louisiana Technology Council to conduct a forensic search for the missing messages but fired the firm after its president said he suspected a tech-savvy person with high-level access had intentionally removed the mayor's e-mail inbox.

Nagin then hired SunBlock Systems of McLean, Va., to resume searching for the missing files and to review LTC's efforts.

In its 27-page final report, dated April 15 but not released to the public until Sunday, SunBlock says it doubts that further searches could uncover more messages than those it found. For the target period of its search, July 1 to Dec. 1, 2008, the firm found 4,946 messages, it says. Nagin reportedly sent or received as many as 100 messages a day.

SunBlock says a system to retain Nagin's e-mail was not in place for the period covered by the news media's requests. "Budget considerations and procurement issues have undermined backup practices," the report says, even though methods of archiving such messages "are relatively inexpensive."

The report says many city employees were not aware of the city's policy on retaining e-mail correspondence, and Nagin thought his messages "were being preserved independently, allowing him to delete his e-mails after reading them."